'18 DR. IIIi:RI!ErvT ON THE LOCAL HABITATION OF PLANTS, 



which has sufficient powers of endurance to struggle tlirough, will 

 become the ultimate lord of tiie forest. Such is, ])eriiaps, the 

 sugar-maple of America, which is said to reign almost exclu- 

 sively on the best soil. In each successive grade of inferior fer- 

 tility the like struggle must be maintained, and the power of 

 endurance must finally determine whicli shall be the occupants 

 of each several position ; thougli the question of endurance will 

 turn upon various points, such as excess or deficiency of light, 

 heat, and moisture, and denseness or lightness of the atmosphere 

 or soil. 



The first step in cultivation is therefore the use of the extir- 

 pator of intrusive vegetables, whether it be the hand, or the 

 hoe, or the plough and harrow ; the second step, after having 

 ascertained whether the plant in its natural state exists by endur- 

 incr the want or the excess of moisture or heat, will be to relieve 



c? / 



it i'rom the necessity of such endurance, as far as it is injurious 

 to its vigorous development. Thus it will be found that Orchis 

 latifolia, removed from the swamp, in which it struggles with 

 other swamp-plants, will grow more vigorously where it is culti- 

 vated with less wet. Tlie small Polygala vulgaris is stated in 

 Mr. Babington's Manual to grow in dry pastures, having flowers 

 either blue, white, or red. I believe the stated habitation to be 

 only thus far true, that it does not grow in water. I do not 

 recollect seeing it in sandy pastures : I know it well on chalk 

 and on clay. In Englar.d it is little admired. In the alluvial 

 and very moist meadows of Zante, near the sea, in the vicinity of 

 Trieste, it formed a most conspicuous part of the meadow-crop at 

 the end of May, and the beauty with which it painted the herbage 

 was to me astonishing. It seemed that, in a warmer climate, it 

 could endure more moisture than with us. On the slope of 

 Monte Spaccato, where no grass grows, large single plants of it 

 stood in the bare soil amongst the stones, with every interme- 

 diate diversity of pearl-colour and lilac, showing evidently that 

 the merits of that little plant under cultivation are not appreci- 

 ated or known. We must recollect that sandy soil could not 

 abide on very steep hill-sides. 



On the San Gothard pass I observed the little yellow violet, 

 of which I had possessed a plant twenty-five years ago that was 

 quickly lost, flowering profusely on the northern face of rocks 

 from which water oozed through every crevice. Sometimes its 

 roots were confined between two horizontal layers of stone, and 

 it flourished all along the crack, in the manner of the small 

 trailing snapdragon ; sometimes it grew under an overhanging 

 ledge of rock ; but, where tlie ground amongst the rocks was 

 constantly moistened by a fresh supply of oozing water and the 

 sun did not reach, it luxuriated. 



